Bitterroot Boil

James Lee Burke heats up Big Sky Country

By John Hood

In my not-so-humble opinion (why have a humble opinion?), the three best literary pulpists in America are Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke. Each writes this country as it is, cracks, crevices, scars and all, and none of ’em apologizes for anything.

Of the three, though, only Jim Burke remains to be suitably immortalized in celluloid. Sure, Phil Joanou did a credibly sweaty job with Alec Baldwin et al. in Heaven’s Prisoners, but no one’s yet to make of Burke a Mr. Majestyk or an All the Pretty Horses, let alone a Get Shorty or a No Country for Old Men.

Come fall, however, all that may change. Yep, word is that Bertrand Tavernier has completed In the Electric Mist, with Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Burke’s fallen hero Dave Robicheaux, and since Jones also owns the rights to Dixie City Jam, Burke’s cinematic due may soon be a given.

Till then we’ll have to continue to rely upon the master’s written voice to get to the heart of what makes America matter, a voice that encompasses both the vastness of nuance and the nuance of the vastness that makes and breaks Americans. It’s a bold voice, spoken in engaging strokes of red and white and black and blue, yet at the same time it can get as intimate as a whisper. Imagine if that voice inside your head knew how to tell tall tales. That kinda voice.

Burke’s latest tall tale is titled Swan Peak (Simon & Schuster, $25.95). Like 16 of its predecessors, it concerns the shenanigans of a man named Robicheaux and his ever-brawling best buddy, Clete Purcell. Unlike the 16 that have come before, it takes place not in the steam of The Big Easy, but in the vales between Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains.

But don’t think for a second that things don’t get as heated as one of Café du Monde’s inimitable beignets, despite the fact that Dave and Clete are ostensibly up in Big Sky Country for nothing but a little R and R. From the moment an ex-soldier of murdered mob boss Sonny Dio enters the picture, the heat gets turned up to high. Problem is, the accidental interlopers only wanna play it cool.

Well, Dave does anyway. Clete would just as soon throw his right fist into the thick of things as kick back another brew, and he does both, a lot. One slug leads to another, and the brawling unveils some backwoods murders that’d make even a city-slicking serial killer mad with envy. That the many murders happen to be linked to a family of oil barons and includes one horribly disfigured brother only ensures the heat is as unseemly as the steam used to create it. That they’re also at the core of some ugly hustle brings it all to a boil. Throw in a faded country music beauty, her lamming ex, a gun bull with a predilection for cons, a randy FBI gal on a mission and one very adamant man of the land, and you’ve got a cast even fish would fly to and fry up for dinner.

As always, I shan’t spoil the story (buy the book). But I will say that here Burke seems to have gone beyond his already brilliant best. How he did it, I don’t know. But he did it. And he did it with enough bad men to do me some good.

James Lee Burke’s Swan Peak hits bookstores Tuesday, July 8. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

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